


Pride

by Fierceawakening



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megatron's thoughts on the fall of Vos. There's a lot of headcanon that he orchestrated it -- I think that's actually from some very old bit of Marvel canon somewhere. I never liked that, so here's my version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pride

Megatron turned on his heel, leaving the slums of Vos behind him.

Vos was a beautiful city, spires of polished metal rising high to pierce the sky.

But not here. Not Below. Not where the wingless lurked, rusted and broken, staring up at the towers in envy and despair.

Megatron was a grounded mech as well, his broad, heavily armored frame built for the hard labor of the mines and adapted to the violence of the deathmatch arena.

Or better said,  _re_ built.

Like so many others, Megatron should have had wings.

The Council had redesigned their frames, twisting thin, sensor-rich plating designed for flight into armor reinforcing workers’ chests — or the very backs they once had risen from. Magnetic pulses had deadened the delicate sensors usually used for flight. Where once they had been capable of feeling the faintest fluctuations in air current — now they would prove impervious to pain.

Perfect brutes; perfect beasts of burden.

Megatron growled. The barbs at his shoulders — Starscream had told him they had once formed the front of his wings — twitched, flicking back and forth.

But he had more to seethe at right now than what had been done to him, or even to his brothers.

It was Vos that would fall now. The last of Cybertron’s great cities.The jewel of a lost empire, shining bright and defiant in the center of a crumbling crown.

He had done his best to convince Starscream of the danger. To prove to the proud young prince that his armada alone could never stand against the might of those who ruled their planet.

But Starscream had not listened.

Megatron had promised him aid. He had no army. Not yet. His Decepticons were not the warriors they should have been.

They were only a band of revolutionaries, swayed to action by his words and to violence by the rage those words brought out in them, flared to life by the things Megatron told them.

What had happened to their bodies, their functions, their wills, their sparks. Why they tore one another to scrap in the arenas of Kaon, while the real enemy laughed and shouted encouragement from the stands.

They were not an army. Not without the knowledge and the training and the discipline of the Old Empire to temper them.

But Megatron had told them all he knew — and war was in their sparks and in their code. They had been built as fighters — not as slaves.

And they knew it, and would fight at his call.

Even if he called them to defend a city that was not their own.

But Starscream had refused his offer. His Seekers, he said, had those long millennia of training and tradition that Megatron’s band of barbarians lacked.

And soon the spires of his City would fall in flames.

Megatron’s claw clenched. His optics flared, a deep red echo of the fires he could see so clearly in his mind.

He could order the Decepticons to defend the city anyway. They could gather in the valleys, hiding in wait to ambush those who would plunder the last treasure left in their dying world. When the Council’s amies attacked, they could fall upon them with all the pent-up rage inside them, all the eagerness for vengeance coiled within their fierce sparks.

They would save the city if they did. Megatron had no doubt of it.

His spark pulsed. Every circuit in his frame twitched with the sudden impulse to turn around. To stare up at the burnished spires of Vos, his spark swelling at the beauty of the light glinting off them. To pledge himself, and those at his command, to its defense until the bitter end.

And yet, Starscream had made his choice.

He had told Megatron that Vos would never fall. That he and his armada would save their home alone. That they wanted no aid and needed no aid, especially not from a band of hoodlums and barbarians.

Starscream was the Winglord of Vos — the last prince of a mighty lineage.

If he meant to lead — to be the prince his people needed — Megatron did him no favors sparing him the consequences of his decisions.

As terrible as they would be.

He cycled air heavily through his vents, forcing his optics shut as his talons clutched blindly at the air.

 _No mercy,_ he reminded himself.  _Mercy is a glitch. Mercy is a cancer._

_Mercy is the virus that allowed our masters to disarm and mutilate us._

_Mercy, and the fear of violence._

He would return to Vos, of course. He would come back for Starscream, for his Seekers, for the armada that would someday serve as his Decepticons’ air force.

But he would not return until the siege of the city was over.

If Megatron was wrong — if Starscream and the Seekers proved mighty enough to save their city — then he would return to acknowledge that he had underestimated the young Winglord. He would ask for an alliance, as he had already. But he would expect nothing. The Seekers would have no reason to ally with a mech who had prophesied their doom.

But if the Seekers lost — if the City fell —

— then Megatron would sift through the ashes with his own claws if need be, seeking the last safe place where the Winglord huddled. He would remind Starscream of his hubris and force him to face the devastation his own free choice had wrought.

And then he would offer the young prince his chance at revenge.

He would not bring the Decepticons as allies, as helpers, as builders. There would be time enough to rebuild Vos — and any other city that fell to those who defended the injustice of caste — once Iacon and all their enemy’s outposts lay in ruins.

But he would offer Starscream and his Seekers a place among the Decepticons. A rank among the warriors and conquerors whose mission had always been retribution.

And to Starscream himself — deposed and shamed, a prince without a kingdom — he would give the highest place of honor at his side.

He grinned, his fangs gleaming in the light that filtered down even to the Undercity. Unlike his own home, choked by the smog of its factories, there was yet light, here in the pit of the City’s despair.

Starscream would be his. And Starscream would have his city again. Once he had earned it.

Unless their enemy killed him.

Megatron growled, a roar rumbling up from the depths of his chassis.  _That_ he would not abide.

Starscream was no feeble imitation of an aristocrat, granted power by fearful weaklings who gave titles to themselves. He had potential — however untempered his pride.

If he died — there would be nothing left of this place, and nothing left of those who had destroyed it.

Seekers or no, he would see to that himself. 


End file.
